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Robin Williams, left, and Sarah Michelle Gellar headline the comedy The Crazy Ones. In scene after scene, Williams is working hard, too hard, to ever just be in the moment.Photo: CBS

Alex Strachan

Published: September 12, 2013 - 2:59 AM

Updated: September 17, 2013 - 3:00 PM

Thursday is the most important night of the TV week — for advertisers, if not for viewers, because of the weekend movie openings and the studios’ need to tell potential moviegoers about the new films ahead of time, but not so far ahead of time that they forget.

That’s why, this year, the night features new sitcoms from some of the most familiar faces in TV comedy, including Robin Williams and Will Arnett. (Despite what you might have read elsewhere, Michael J. Fox’s new sitcom is airing in Canada on Wednesdays, not Thursdays, because Global TV decided it that way. The same goes for Sean Hayes’s new sitcom, Sean Saves the World.)

Curiously, the night’s new dramas focus on fantasy and teen-oriented costume dramas, a change of pace from Thursday’s usual diet of police procedurals, hospital shows and courtroom dramas. And despite the pedigree of the TV comedians, it’s the dramas that show the most promise — provided, that is, they aren’t lost in the crowd of popular returning dramas like Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Elementary and Glee. The reality is that, in any new season, viewers pay more attention to their returning favourites than the newcomers, often with good reason.

No new TV night would be complete without at least one scheduling change. In Thursday’s case, the conspiracy thriller Person of Interest, a fixture on Thursdays until this year, will now be seen on Tuesdays instead, on CTV rather than City.

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CHOICE PICK

The Crazy Ones

Premières Sept. 26, City, CBS

Robin Williams, left, and James Wolk in The Crazy Ones

With the night’s most promising new comedy, The Michael J. Fox Show, consigned to Wednesdays in Canada despite airing Thursdays on parent network NBC, Robin Williams’s sitcom The Crazy Ones is the best of an unexpectedly lacklustre freshman class.

Williams plays Simon Roberts, the over-the-top, larger-than-life boss of a flailing advertising agency desperate to keep a key client in the series opener. His daughter Sydney, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, is the ying to his yang — focused, organized and professional, but lacking in creativity and the flair that made her father who he is.

The running joke, of course, is that she’s the parent in their relationship — at one point he quips that he has 25 voices in his head, as apt a description of Williams as the character he’s playing — and it falls on her shoulders to save the agency.

James Wolk plays the dashing, handsome art director who’s always bubbling over with ideas. Wolk was cast in The Crazy Ones before his scene-stealing turn this past season in Mad Men, as mysterious junior account executive and mystery man Bob Benson, and the timing could prove unfortunate. The last thing The Crazy One needs is another reminder of Mad Men: It already plays like a pallid imitation of Mad Men, intended or not.

Behind the camera: Crazily enough, The Crazy Ones hails from David E. Kelley, the veteran TV writer-producer known for courtroom dramas like L.A. Law, The Practice and Boston Legal, hospital dramas like Chicago Hope and Monday Mornings, and flights of fancy like Ally McBeal and The Wedding Bells — but not a traditional TV comedy like The Crazy Ones.

Even so, Kelley said that writing for Williams — a comedian notorious for his riffing off-script and improvising at the drop of a hat, so to speak — was, and is, a rejuvenating experience that has kept him on his toes.

“Both,” Kelley said last month, when asked if The Crazy Ones is scripted or ad libbed. “He says my words perfectly. Then he uses his.

“From the minute we started shooting, he was pretty much word-perfect. We have a script. We shoot the script. After we get a scene, we ask him, ‘Do you want to play with it? Play with it.’ And he does. He likes the box. He manages inside the box … then he tears the box down. We always allow him a few takes where he gets to break out of it.

“What you have in the end is the basic architecture of the script, but you also have ad libs and the spontaneity and joy of those improvised moments as well.”

On the screen: Oh, boy. Almost everything about The Crazy Ones seems frenetic and forced, almost to the point of being self-conscious. Williams’s great strength as a standup comedian is the almost effortless way he seems to channel different streams of thought at the same time, with a dizzying parade of voices, accents and mannerisms, all the while managing to remain witty. He isn’t asked to be a comedian in The Crazy Ones, though. He’s supposed to play a part. And that part just isn’t that interesting as Williams the comedian.

There are moments in The Crazy Ones, thankfully, when he does let go, and one can see the sitcom it could be. The Crazy One’s biggest asset — Williams — is also its biggest problem. In scene after scene, Williams is working hard, too hard, to ever just be in the moment.

It’s hard to tell, based on the first episode alone, where The Crazy Ones will go from here. There’s not enough of Williams’s signature riffing to appeal to his legion of comedy fans, and the scripted comedy isn’t interesting enough, or funny enough, on its own to appeal to fans of traditional TV sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory.

The funniest moment in The Crazy Ones is an outtake at the end credits, where Williams finally goes rogue during a take and Gellar is in near hysterics. It’s a fun moment, but it’s never a good sign when the funniest thing in a new comedy is the outtakes.

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POTENTIAL PICKS

The Millers

Premières Oct. 3, Global, CBS

Beau Bridges, left, Will Arnett and Margo Martindale star in The Millers

The Millers is guaranteed a shot at success because it follows the most popular sitcom on TV today, The Big Bang Theory, on its parent network in the U.S., where the all-important renewal and cancellation decisions are made. Despite the advent of the PVR, not to mention the now-antiquated remote control, many viewers neglect to change the channel between programs. (The Millers airs in Canada on Global; The Big Bang Theory on CTV, so the same logic may not apply — except that, in the end, it’s CBS that will make the key decisions.)

Will Arnett plays Nathan Mille, an aging manchild who startles his parents one day when he tells them he has divorced his wife. His parents, played by Beau Bridges and Margo Martindale — a born scene-stealer and the best thing about The Millers’ otherwise crass, crude opener — decide to end their own marriage of 40-plus years, citing irreconcilable differences and a near lifetime of slights and petty humiliations.

Complicating matters — admit it, you can’t wait to find out what happens next — Miller’s father moves in with his grown daughter, played by Jayma Mays, while his mother moves in with him.

J.B. Smoove has a recurring role as the excitable best friend — the 2013 sitcom equivalent of the wacky neighbour — and the result is set-up-joke-punchline after set-up-joke-punchline, complete with aggressive, loud laugh track.

The Millers is not awful exactly — that distinction belongs to Super Fun Night, Mom, Dads, Back in the Game, Welcome to the Family, We Are Men and any number of other new sitcoms from the 2013-14 freshman class of alleged TV comedies — but it’s close.

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Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

Premières Oct. 10, City, ABC

Sophie Lowe stars in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

Suspenseful but unthreatening, disturbing yet whimsical and kind-hearted, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is not so much a spinoff of Once Upon a Time as it is a similarly styled fantasy inspired by a fairy-tale classic.

Once Upon a Time creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz have applied their familiar-yet-unfamiliar signature twist to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In this version, Sophie Lowe plays Alice as a young ingenue in Victorian England who’s committed to an insane asylum after concocting a fanciful tale about an “other world” that exists on the other side of a rabbit hole.

She swears it’s all true — the invisible cat, the playing cards that talk, the white rabbit, the knave of hearts, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the dashing prince who would sweep her off her feet — but her doctors insist she’s losing her mind. They have devised a cure-all treatment that will make her forget — everything, the good along with the bad.

The result, like Once Upon a Time before it, is hard to judge based on a single hour, but Kitsis and Horowitz have a proven track record at telling a familiar story in an unfamiliar way, with surprises both pleasant and unpleasant. In Once Upon a Time’s case, even the unpleasant surprises are there for a reason, and it somehow all works in the end.

Sophie Lowe stars in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

Wonderland’s biggest threat, however, may be the time-period competition: It’s up against the more established The Vampire Diaries, top-rated comedy The Big Bang Theory, cult favourite Parks and Recreation and, as if that weren’t enough, The X Factor’s results show. A happy ending is still possible, but Once Upon a Time never had to face that competition.

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The Originals

Premières Oct. 3, CH, The CW

The Originals

How times flies for mere mortals. The Vampire Diaries is about to turn five years old: Diaries celebrates its 90th episode on Oct. 3, with the milestone 100th to follow in the new year.

That may not be what’s most remarkable about a vampire saga that debuted — how quickly they forget — just 10 months after the first film in The Twilight Saga, though.

The vamps in Vampire Diaries have now outlived six Twilight movies and are still going strong, spawning sequels, spinoffs and prequels like there’s no tomorrow.

The new drama The Originals turns back the clock to 19th century New Orleans. The story revolves around the nefarious Mikaelson siblings, the so-called “Original Vampires” according to Vampire Diaries lore, who hailed from 10th century Scandinavia and from whom — it’s said — all current vampires are descended.

Joseph Morgan, Daniel Gillies and Claire Holt reprise their recurring Diaries characters, Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah. They’re now at the centre of their own TV universe, in a new series that, as with Nina Dobrev’s duelling Diaries characters Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce, will alternate between present-day and period New Orleans.

The Originals finds Klaus returning to the city he once called home, after he learns that the werewolf Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) is pregnant with his child, thanks to an ill-advised one night stand. Vampires, it seems, aren’t immune from the life complications and romantic entanglements that befall lowly mortals.

There’s a catch. In order to stake a renewed claim to New Orleans, Klaus must first deal with his protégé Marcel (Charles Michael Davis), a fancy lad who has yet to learn to respect his elders.

The Originals’ pilot episode originally aired as an episode of The Vampire Diaries in April. No more episodes have been made available for review, but early, behind-the-scenes signs are encouraging: The Originals’ is overseen by Vampire Diaries co-creator and longtime writer and executive producer Julie Plec. The Originals is not the B-team, in other words.

A programming note: The Originals will air immediately following The Vampire Diaries’ season opener on Oct. 3, on parent network CW, and will then move to its regular day and time, Tuesdays at 8 p.m., starting Oct. 8. It will air in Canada on the loose-knit CH chain of independent stations; Vampire Diaries will stay in its regular home on CTV.

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Reign

Premières Oct. 17, CTV Two, The CW

Reign

Anyone expecting Reign to be an austere, modernized adaptation of Charles Jarrott’s 1971 costume epic Mary, Queen of Scots, or even a prelude to Swiss filmmaker Thomas Imbach’s film of the same name — a Special Presentation selection at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival! — will be disappointed, if not downright disillusioned.

The best way to look at Reign, a teen-oriented “reinterpretation” of the life and untimely death of Mary I of Scotland — queen regnant of Bonnie Scotland from 1542 to 1567 — is to remember that it hails from The CW, home of Beauty & the Beast, Arrow, Hart of Dixie, Supernatural and The Carrie Diaries.

It’s a decidedly teen version of history, in other words.

Australian ingenue Adelaide Kane, 23, plays the young Mary. London, U.K.-born Toby Regbo, 21, plays the Dauphin Francis, Mary’s husband — for a while — who would later be crowned King Francis II of France. Happily for all concerned, Regbo looks nothing like the pictures of the actual Francis II. This is TV, after all: Jonathan Rhys Meyers of The Tudors didn’t much look like the historically accepted portraits of Henry VIII, either.

Megan Follows — yes, the former Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables — has the thankless task of playing Catherine de’ Medici, Mary’s mother-in-law and Reign’s default adult-in-residence. She’s in her 40s, which is, like, really old — Vampire Diaries old. Eww.

Reign isn’t a horror show exactly. It may remind some of The Borgias, without the raunchiness or high-minded wordplay. It’s strangely earnest at times and slightly wacky at others — as when the music suddenly segues into Baz Luhrmann territory, with MTV-style music videos superimposed over period action. See Mary arrested and held prisoner at Lochleven Castle; now listen to some Katy Perry.

Could be worse, though.

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Welcome to the Family

Premières Oct. 3, Global, NBC

Welcome to the Family

Welcome to the Family is the flip side of The Millers, marriage-wise that is. It’s about a happily married older couple, played by Mike O’Malley and Mary McCormack, who are looking forward to their semi-retirement years now that their middle-class, middle-of-the-road teenage daughter has graduated from high school and is preparing for college, despite less-than-stellar grades.

She has a secret boyfriend, an honours student recently accepted to Stanford University who, wait for it — this is a sitcom! — is from a close-knit Latino family on the wrong side of town.

Faster than you can say “clash of cultures,” the two teens announce to their respective parents that she’s pregnant and about to become a young mom. But wait, there’s more. They’re engaged — another family surprise! — and it isn’t long, one commercial break in fact, before the blended family jokes are put through the blender.

If the scenario sounds familiar, that could be because you watched All in The Family, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Maude or any number of other classic Norman Lear sitcoms in the early to mid 1970s — but without Lear’s creativity, daring, originality, comic timing, sense of the times and ear for the way real people really thought and behaved … in 1970.